Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Song Stuck In My Head This Week - 24th May '11 - Bob Dylan - Hurricane

This week's blog was always planned to be posted today regardless of recent delays in my blogging. The simple reason for the choice of today's date is this, it's Bob Dylan's 70th birthday and to celebrate I want to blog about a song that is often in my head and is my favourite Dylan song, 'Hurricane'.

'Hurricane' was written in response to the case of the boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter who was jailed along with John Artis in 1966 for allegedly committing a triple murder. The case was riddle with faulty evidence, questionable eyewitness testimony and appeared to be highly racially motivated.

Over the following years Carter continued to maintain his innocence and, after meeting Carter, Dylan with co-writer Jacques Levy wrote the song 'Hurricane' and released it both as a single as well as putting the track on the 1975 album 'Desire' in order to raise the profile of the injustice of the case.

Dylan then organised concerts in both Madison Square Garden in New York and the Houston Auditorium in Houston, Texas, in order to raise money to help Rubin Carter appeal his conviction (though the latter didn't raise any money after expenses had been paid, the Madison Square Garden show did raise $100,000).

At the re-trial in 1976, Rubin Carter's sentence was reduced but it took until 1985 for the conviction to finally be overturned when Federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin ruled that Carter had not received a fair trial and that his conviction was, in effect, based on racism.

For me, what makes this song so great is that you are drawn into the story being told in the lyrics. They are so descriptive that you can almost picture the story playing out in your mind like a movie. This is an intentional style of writing on the part of Dylan and co-writer Levy, but it truly works to full effect as it captures the imagination so strongly. It also leaves me, at least, with a strong sense of passion for justice to be done which is a feeling not all of Dylan's 'protest songs' leave me with - though this could just be a generational thing.

If you've never heard this song then I highly recommend you give it a listen and I'll catch you all next week!!

Happy Birthday Mr Zimmerman!!

Bob Dylan - Hurricane

Pistols shots ring out in the barroom nightEnter Patty Valentine from the upper hallShe sees the bartender in a pool of bloodCries out "My God they killed them all"Here comes the story of the HurricaneThe man the authorities came to blameFor something that he never donePut him in a prison cell but one time he could-a beenThe champion of the world.

Three bodies lying there does Patty seeAnd another man named Bello moving around mysteriously"I didn't do it" he says and he throws up his hands"I was only robbing the register I hope you understandI saw them leaving" he says and he stops"One of us had better call up the cops"And so Patty calls the copsAnd they arrive on the scene with their red lights flashingIn the hot New Jersey night.

Meanwhile far away in another part of townRubin Carter and a couple of friends are driving aroundNumber one contender for the middleweight crownHad no idea what kinda shit was about to go downWhen a cop pulled him over to the side of the roadJust like the time before and the time before thatIn Patterson that's just the way things goIf you're black you might as well not shown up on the street'Less you wanna draw the heat.

Alfred Bello had a partner and he had a rap for the corpsHim and Arthur Dexter Bradley were just out prowling aroundHe said "I saw two men running out they looked like middleweightsThey jumped into a white car with out-of-state plates"And Miss Patty Valentine just nodded her headCop said "Wait a minute boys this one's not dead"So they took him to the infirmaryAnd though this man could hardly seeThey told him that he could identify the guilty men.

Four in the morning and they haul Rubin inTake him to the hospital and they bring him upstairsThe wounded man looks up through his one dying eyeSays "Wha'd you bring him in here for ? He ain't the guy !"Yes here comes the story of the HurricaneThe man the authorities came to blameFor something that he never donePut in a prison cell but one time he could-a beenThe champion of the world.

Four months later the ghettos are in flameRubin's in South America fighting for his nameWhile Arthur Dexter Bradley's still in the robbery gameAnd the cops are putting the screws to him looking for somebody to blame"Remember that murder that happened in a bar ?""Remember you said you saw the getaway car?""You think you'd like to play ball with the law ?""Think it might-a been that fighter you saw running that night ?""Don't forget that you are white".

Arthur Dexter Bradley said "I'm really not sure"Cops said "A boy like you could use a breakWe got you for the motel job and we're talking to your friend BelloNow you don't wanta have to go back to jail be a nice fellowYou'll be doing society a favorThat sonofabitch is brave and getting braverWe want to put his ass in stirWe want to pin this triple murder on himHe ain't no Gentleman Jim".

Rubin could take a man out with just one punchBut he never did like to talk about it all that muchIt's my work he'd say and I do it for payAnd when it's over I'd just as soon go on my wayUp to some paradiseWhere the trout streams flow and the air is niceAnd ride a horse along a trailBut then they took him to the jailhouseWhere they try to turn a man into a mouse.

All of Rubin's cards were marked in advanceThe trial was a pig-circus he never had a chanceThe judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slumsTo the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bumAnd to the black folks he was just a crazy niggerNo one doubted that he pulled the triggerAnd though they could not produce the gunThe DA said he was the one who did the deedAnd the all-white jury agreed.

Rubin Carter was falsely triedThe crime was murder 'one' guess who testifiedBello and Bradley and they both baldly liedAnd the newspapers they all went along for the rideHow can the life of such a manBe in the palm of some fool's hand ? To see him obviously framedCouldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land Where justice is a game.

Now all the criminals in their coats and their tiesAre free to drink martinis and watch the sun riseWhile Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cellAn innocent man in a living hellThat's the story of the HurricaneBut it won't be over till they clear his nameAnd give him back the time he's donePut him in a prison cell but one time he could-a beenThe champion of the world.